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French Pickles
Slice one peck of green tomatoes, cover them plentifully with salt, and leave them for one night. Cut one-fourth peck of onions into slices, and put a thick layer of them in a metal kettle; then put in a layer of the tomatoes, a layer of onions, and so on until all are used. Sprinkle between each layer some of the following spices: Four ounces of white mustard seed, one ounce each of cloves, allspice, and celery seed, one tablespoonful of cayenne pepper, one pound of brown sugar, and four tablespoonfuls of mixed mustard. Cover the above ingredients with vinegar and boil them well for one hour. At the end of that time pack the pickles in jars, and pour the vinegar over them. When cold, tie some stout paper over the jars, and keep in a dry store-cupboard.
This is a green-tomato chow-chow of the kind every late-Victorian store-cupboard held, but its preserving method is the part that has not survived. The notes below explain the units and the spicing, and why the finished jars are not safe to keep.
- Why it fails: the vinegar is never measuredGreen tomatoes and onions are both low-acid vegetables, and safe shelf storage of a mixed pickle depends on knowing the finished acidity. "Cover the above ingredients with vinegar" gives no ratio, and nineteenth-century household vinegar varied widely in strength, so the pH of the result is unknown.
- Why it fails: a paper cover is not a sealStout paper tied over the mouth of a jar keeps out dust and flies. It does not exclude air or microorganisms, and it cannot produce the vacuum that a processed jar relies on. Jars of a low-acid vegetable mixture of unknown acidity, kept at cupboard temperature under a permeable cover, are open to mould and spoilage, and where anaerobic pockets form in an under-acidified pack Clostridium botulinum is a recognised hazard; the toxin is not detectable by smell or appearance.
- Why it fails: no processing stepThe pickles are boiled in the kettle and then packed, but the filled jars are never heat-processed, and the jars and closures are never sterilised. Modern practice for any long-keeping pickle calls for a measured acid level and a timed boiling-water bath. Use a current tested recipe if you want jars for the shelf.
- A peckA dry peck is eight quarts, roughly 12 to 13 lb of sliced green tomatoes here, with about 3 lb of onions for the quarter peck. This is a very large batch by modern standards.
- "Mixed mustard"Not mustard powder but made-up prepared mustard, the wet paste sold in jars. Four tablespoonfuls of it sit alongside the four ounces of whole white mustard seed, which stay whole and pop between the teeth in the finished pickle.
- "A metal kettle"A wide, deep preserving pan rather than a tea kettle. Note that vinegar and spices will pick up metallic flavours and colour from unlined copper, brass or bare cast iron.
- The overnight saltingThe salt draws water out of the tomato slices so the vinegar is not diluted. The original does not say to drain or rinse them, but the liquor should be poured off before layering, or the result is punishingly salty.
- The hour of boilingAn hour reduces the slices to a soft, dark relish rather than a crisp pickle. That appears to be the intended texture for a chow-chow served with cold meat rather than an error.
Green-tomato pickle was a thrift dish: the tomatoes that would not ripen before frost went into vinegar with mustard seed, brown sugar and warm spices, producing the sweet-sharp relish that circulated under names like chow-chow, piccalilli and, as here, "French pickles." The French label is hard to account for by any French original, and by the 1890s American cooking borrowed French vocabulary freely. The storage method, paper tied over the jar mouth, was common advice well into the twentieth century and is the clearest marker of how much has changed about food safety since.